Jamie

This was a HARD puzzle, with a natick for me where SAL and SNEAD crossed. What is SAL soda?

Too much trivia. Did not like.

All crosswords are a waste of time, in a good way. This was a waste of time in a bad way. I knew I was in for it when I didn't understand the paragraph of instructions but thought I'd certainly pick up the idea on the fly. I never did. Please, never give us another one of whatever this was.

I love a grid that doesn't require me to know people's names.

I feel meh about "mid"

Blech, hated it, more brain power than I wanted to spend on a puzzle.

IMO, this was just not a good puzzle. Even after giving up and revealing the answers, I still don't understand what the constructor was going for with a lot of these clues. Just absolutely a slog that never paid off.

A cute little puzzle that didn't raise any flags

And here I was banging my head against a metaphorical wall trying to figure out where Wayne's World took place.

I was defeated at the corner of WEEDTEA and WRIER. I had "DRIER" and DEEDTEA, which I figured must be some brand of THC tea. Oh well.

Not my favorite because a) I'm not a Trekkie and b) I could not for the life of me get "games" for "sneakily exploits." Oh well.

Aril enjoyable Monday puzzle.

Monday's mini was more challenging than the midi.

I had a heck of a time with the southeast corner but finally got it. This was one of those where on the first run through I barely had anything to hang my word-hat on.

I was wracking my brain for the word "Weehawken" before noticing the clue was asking for the "when" of the duel, not the where.

I guess the point of the gimmicks, like not accepting "line" as an answer, is to keep people humble by preventing them from racking up a streak. If so, it's working. If the point is to somehow enhance the solving experience, it's not working.

I really had to work at this one, and found the bottom left corner to be especially annoying due to the crossing of two obscure authors' names. But I'm proud of myself for getting it without googling anything.

Hated the 40 minutes that I did attempt to slog through it and finally just pressed the reveal puzzle button. I prefer my Sundays to be well-clued without too much weird gimmicry.

Some extremely quick Monday fun.

Is it cheating when you have the whole puzzle done except for one square and you put every letter in the alphabet in, one at a time, until you finally get the music? Because that's how this puzzle ended for me

Valley speak has a lot more to LIKE about it than just that one word. I mean, GAG ME WITH A SPOON, surely you can think of more TOTALLY TUBULAR clues. Actually, I really enjoyed this puzzle.

Just the kind of dumb puns I like; but I have never heard of a Roleo.

I like it when a Monday puzzle has a theme!

Congratulations on your debut, youngster! I had to google for some of the answers.

I loved the theme; once I figured out the conceit, the answers for each of the theme clues were extremely simple to suss out. A pleasure and required no googling.

I liked the jokes, but it would have been an easier puzzle had I followed the Yankees or Harry Potter.

You never know what's going to resonate, as a puzzle-doer. My first runthroughs were not very fruitful, especially because I had "eye of the hurricane" instead of BELLY OF THE BEAST. But I did know sunk cost fallacy, so that helped me find a lot of the across words.

Call of Duty isn't the most popular American video game franchise, and afaik it's spelled Ojibwe.

I enjoyed this puzzle, but it took me a long time to figure out the themed clues enough for them to help me with the rest of the puzzle.

Super cute theme! This was one where I probably made my job harder by attempting to fit what I knew about the thinkers into the spaces rather than attempting all of the other clues first.

So cute! I read Bird By Bird ages ago, it was the first themed answer I got in the puzzle.

I got stuck on who the heck ALIG might be. Only after I finished the puzzle and googled did I understand it was Ali G. Of whom I have never been a fan.

Do people really say "eye up"? Great puzzle but that clue raised my eye brow.

This whole thing was on my WAVElength.

Cute themer for a Monday!

Hehehe I did it, but I didn't enjoy it. It's good that all of the themed answers were cliches, because I could not see the relationship between the themed clues and the answers.

Didn't look to see what the theme was but finished in record time.

Little and cute!

Having to look up names is not very interesting to me. The best puzzles are those that dont require knowledge of trivia.

A fun puzzle although I couldn't figure out what SOT HERE was until after the puzzle was solved. It reminded me of a sign we once saw: "Do not remove alcoholic from patio."